This is America
Don’t catch you slippin’ now
Seriously, don’t slip. It will both literally and metaphorically cost you an arm and a leg in the states.
Ambulance in my area
Maybe playing devil’s advocate here, but if it was the ambulance’s fault then the ambulance company’s insurance should be paying for all of the medical bills, including the ambulance ride. And the bill for the ambulance ride pays the EMS workers salaries and the vehicle maintenance.
The amount of profiteering in the medical industry is obscene, but I’m not sure this is an example of it…
I’m not a lawyer, but it strikes me that this could be exactly what is happening. The ambulance company’s insurance wouldn’t pay the hospital directly, they aren’t health insurance. So instead, the cyclist’s health insurance footed the initial bill. Then they went after the cyclist for his deductible/copay/whatnot. Now he has to get the money from the ambulance company. If this was vehicle on vehicle violence, he would have gone to his auto insurance, who would have in turn went after the ambulance company’s insurance, but he might not have auto insurance or auto insurance might not be willing to get involved because he wasn’t driving. So he has to go direct to the company. Wouldn’t be shocking if the company pushed off any non-legal petitions from him because he doesn’t have the name weight of an insurance company with lawyers on retainer, so now he is seeking a legal remedy. Insurance doesn’t just work always, there is often a degree of negotiating and litigation involved in these exchanges, especially if one party disagrees with another on matters of liability
GDP📈
He was on a bike… it wasn’t worth abandoning the car
Bikes: a transportation vehicle with health benefits. Ambulance: a transportation vehicle for the unwell.
Bikes are the natural enemy of the ambulance. A war between the bike clan and the ambulance clan is on the horizon.
Solution: Ambulance bikes.
(A show like Top Gear but for bicycles could be pretty awesome.)
It would collapse on itself due to paradox
Nah, I could see it being pretty great. Reviews of new high performance bikes of all kinds, interesting challenges, builds. For instance, build and test something that will force cars to give you the legally required clearance.
Heck, they could even do a Vietnam trip and go down the Ho Chi Minh trail, which is a famous example of the bicycle’s utility.
We got those here in NL, although they don’t transport patients afaik.
Like brothers and sisters
The Ankh-Morpork Ambulance Guild strikes again.
Sounds like it’s time for Vetinari to have a word with them.
A hypercompetent autocract whose only concern was the perfect management of his city was the only unrealistic thing about Discworld.
It has to do with morphic wossname. On the Disc only one person gets to play City Skylines, but he gets to do it with infinite detail.
I mean kinda, but he used his authority very sparingly.
This is one of the most American things I’ve ever read.
Not even close. Notice the date it was posted.
150 shots with a .22 to hit the branch. I’m amazed he didn’t hit the fucking eagle.
That’s awesome! But as an outsider, the ambulance story still seems more “American” to me. There’s been a significant shift in how America is perceived here over the last 30 years.
I’m an outsider and I stand by the 4th of July vet shooting an eagle free story.
That made me swell with a sliver of American pride. Which is a pretty remarkable achievement this week.
lacks guns and burgers but I’ll take it
The driver was distracted because he was eating a Big Mac while cleaning his pistol.
If only there had been a good ambulance with a gun.
If America the legal battle will cost the EMS a huge part of their budget.
It’s called a ‘for profit business’, look it up, people!
A new way to make money! Much easier than waiting for someone to need an ambulance!
Infinite money hack!
they couldve gotten way more than $1,800 if they hit a few more cyclists on the way. theres plenty of room in the back of an ambulance
That’s an interesting business strategy, I’ll give 'em that
Like firemen setting fire to extinguish.
Is this fuck cars or fuck the us?
Show of hands, who pays for ambulances regardless of why?
I will always opt for a Lyft or Uber, unless I am actively dying from something that could kill me in 30 minutes or less, like a massive severed artery or something like that.
They are just as fast, and if I start literally dying in the hospital waiting room, they will most likely pay attention.
The only way it makes sense to take an ambulance to a hospital is if you literally have no other option, or if you are so seriously injured you’ve already lost consciousness or are mostly paralyzed.
You can call an ambulance, paramedics arrive, stabilize you, and then refuse to get in the ambulance.
This costs you nothing.
Then you just bite on your wallet and take an Uber or Lyft, which costs 10 to 20 dollars.
Get in the ambulance? 1 to 3 thousand dollars, for a shitty version of the care you’ll recieve in the hospital anyway, can’t avoid those costs.
My intention is definitely “fuck cars.” The fucked-up thing here is that even ambulance drivers, who should know better more so than almost anybody, are incompetently right-hooking cyclists. Billing him for it is merely the icing on the shit-cake.
Ahhh okay, but you’re not trying to argue that paramedics should be on bicycles or taking public transit! That was the thing that puzzled me.
I think we could avoid a lot of the issues with pedestrians and cyclists getting hit by motor vehicles by getting rid of stroads and properly designing cities to separate streets and roads.
A lot of EMTs work 24-hour shifts, and 48-hour shifts are not uncommon. The thought that the ambulance driver on the road next to me might be at hour 46 is… frequently worrying.
The problem isn’t the EMTs being incompetent, the problem is with the industry standards and the employers.
I was forced to work a few 24+ hour shifts in healthcare and working on zero sleep fucked me up. It gave me migraines, vomiting, insomnia, manic depression and I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.
It is beyond cruel and inhumane that employers can force people to work without sleep. It is so fucked that not allowing someone to sleep is considered a form of torture by the Geneva convention.
That again sounds more like a shithole country problem tan a car problem.
Exactly this. They transported someone, they filled out a PCR for billing to send to insurance and the patient.
My former roommate is an EMT and he spent 90% of his 48 hour shifts sleeping and playing video games.
So your alternative would be that ambulances should no longer use cars? From my perspective all kind of emergency services such as fire department, law enforcement, ambulances should be the very last cars we get rid of as a society. They have to be fast and they need to transport a lot of stuff and people.
The rest of the world does without GIANT and dangerous emergency vehicles for one. They still put out fires and transport sick people. How american fire departments are getting people killed (video from “not just bikes”)
The rest of the world does without GIANT and dangerous emergency vehicles for one.
Could you show me those small and safe emergency vehicles that are used outside the USA? Because I’m outside the USA, I literally live near a firefighter station, and they’re all probably as big as US vehicles.
Any vehicle large enough to carry the necessary equipment and people for emergency services is going to be dangerous to pedestrians. Not sure what you’re trying to prove here.
Tell me youve never been in another country without telling me youve never been in another country.
Ambulances and firetrucks in Europe and Asia are smaller than most american pickup trucks.
I agree that the US have way too many way too big trucks but this…
Ambulances and firetrucks in Europe and Asia are smaller than most american pickup trucks.
… is just wrong. I live in Germany and even small villages with only volunteer firefighters have full blown trucks way above 10 tons.
Most fire departments have something like this:
MAN TGM 18.330 Tank with 4,000 litres of water 18 tons total weight
More specialized departments close to industrial facilities, airports can be also much bigger. This one is currently the biggest weighting 52 tons.
Here in 'Murrica, they send something like in the second photo when grandma falls in the bathroom.
Yes, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. The truck in the first photo is smaller than the trucks my city fire department has. There’s a retirement community not far from where I live, and they send a ladder truck for medical emergencies there several times a week. I’m not really sure what use 4,000 liters of water would be when somebody is having a stroke.
Weight doesn’t matter in this context? US firetrucks are almost a meter wider than german ones. A german firetruck is only about half a meter wider than a Ford F450.
And also firetrucks in US are first responders, they go before ambulances for most emergencies.
Unless they have some sort of advanced materials science in other countries we don’t know about here in the US that makes them as light as cardboard, I’d bet my year’s salary you wouldn’t volunteer to let one hit you.
And yes, I have been out of the US. Shall I tell you what we say about those who “assume” things over here?
Clearly you didnt watch the video, because you couldn’t be more wrong. This is uniquely a north american thing
The rest of the world often also builds better infrastructure, like a protected bike lane, to signifcantly reduce the conflicts between cars and not cars.
Most countries that do that are also significantly smaller lol
Which makes my point. Japan has 300+ people per square km, almost 10x as dense as the US. They still put out fires and carry sick people.
My point is it’s much easier to have localized support when there isn’t miles between buildings lol
The size of a country shouldn’t impact urban areas that much. Cyclists aren’t biking from california to florida on a daily basis, they are biking from their home to their job, gym, or groccery store. Your country is not too big for bike lanes, you’re city planners are just wastefull.
Oh I don’t disagree, just a fair point, it wouldnt make any sense in rural areas, which is 97% of the USA landmass lol
A bike lane would’ve helped. If there wasn’t one, I can see a good reason for whatever the fuck really happened here.
If there had been a bike lane, he could/would have stayed there behind the stopping line acknowledging the right of the ambulance to go first, but without one…I can see someone in panic trying to get out of the way and then getting run over regardless of where he was positioned.
Fun fact, many if not most of those ambulances are made in Canada, and not the USA.
Fun fact: Where they are made doesn’t dictate what specs they should have.
Absolutely true, it was mostly just a response to the “rest of the world” part of the grandparent’s comment.
Sounds like a pretty straightforward lawsuit
Your honor…he hit me!
Nuh-uh!
Yeah huh!!!
He started it!!!
No I didn’t!!!
Moooooom!!!
Your mom has been dead for 32 years…you’re 81
And I’m still bike riding the mean streets of NYC!
Yeah, and getting billed for your bad driving.
The bad driver was the one not getting billed.
This also feels like a good fit for Not The Onion.
Pro gamer move
